This Workshop aims to trace whether and how citizen participation, both in the EU and in the national context, may embody and express dissenting voices and dissensus. Particular attention is paid to citizen participation in correlation with tensions that the expression of dissensus could create between national and EU actors. The focus is three policy areas, namely climate change; migration and asylum; and LGBTQI+ as areas that are deeply rights-relevant both on an individual and community level, that are subject to a high level of disagreement and public contestation across the EU, and that are continuously but also recently subject to law-making, both in terms of regulation and judicial decisions.

The objective of the Workshop is to advance the theoretical and practical aspects of citizen participation as a necessary toolkit of democratic action and which can also address the shortcomings of current institutional representation structures.